The Haunted Hotel of Bedugul

 

1) Location of Bedugul

2) The ‘Other’ Visitors

3) The Eerie Atmosphere

4) The Island of Bali 

5) The Backstory: Tommy Suharto

6) The Astrology of the Main Players

7) The Shadows on the Walls

8) Wabi Sabi: the Beauty of Decay

9) How Haunted is the Haunted Hotel

 

1) Location of Bedugul

In Bali, high up on the mountain slopes of the Batu Karu volcano Bedugul is a large, luxury hotel. It’s around 700 metres above sea level. It is called the Taman Rekreasi Hotel and Resort. It is completely deserted and has been for twenty years or more.

This eerie building is tucked away from the road which is on a snake like S-bend, surrounded by strawberry fields. It is easy miss unless you are specifically looking for it.

All building on the hotel ceased long ago, even though investment into it was said to be worth about $100, million. It appears uninhabited- by any humans that is. Some say it is haunted by the spirits of construction workers who died here.

You have to convince the guards to allow you through the gate and a small garden, for a few rupiahs. He warns you to be careful –not for encountering ghosts-which they never dare mention, but fixtures and fittings  are loose and at any moment the ceilings and walls could collapse.

You enter at your own risk. Even the pathway leading to the main door is not level to the building, so at this different angle, visitors are off kilter from the start.

2) The ‘Other’ Visitors

At the entrance, I saw two other people-they appeared to be tourists with backpacks.

That was disappointing – we  had hoped to be the only ones in there to take photos undisturbed by anyone else. So we held back a couple of minutes for them to go on ahead. I thought perhaps we’ll bump into them later?

But once inside – and there is only one way in and out-we never saw them again-not once, not in any room. Not even a distant sound of them. And we were there for an hour or more.

Strange how they just vanished without trace.

You can see why it has attracted a lot of attention online from photographers, and in 2017  Romain Veillon Daily Mail reported visually with his atmospheric photographs. He captured the spirit of abandoned places just like this one. Many You Tube vloggers come here seeking the thrill of the paranormal.

With every visit, it adds to its charge of energy and to its overall mystique.

3) The Eerie Atmosphere

Being so high up, the hotel can suddenly find itself shrouded in mist. This can obscure what you can see of the surrounding valleys below half lighted- half in darkness.

While it can be sunny one minute, the day light can abruptly switch off as you merge with the clouds. Everything darkens and gets colder and more humid.

I kept an open mind as to what is here and used my body as a tool to register any impression. That way you receive images and feelings-

Perhaps the construction workers would show up?  and even staff who had been earmarked to work there but never got their chance would haunt the empty corridors? Or anything else?

The hotel looks as if it is a ready-made set for a scene in  a supernatural horror film.  There are silences, a compressed and hushed feeling in certain rooms, a ghostliness for sure, and an echo of distant activity –- and sudden drops in temperature in certain rooms.

• Doorways that lead to other rooms leading nowhere in particular.
• Walls have strange marks on them like ink blots or sigils.
• Sudden areas of green light on steps from a broken roof tile.
• A grand exit staircase leading into forest overgrowth.
• Blood- red crosses on the windows- marked for demolition?
• Rooms where you are plunged into total darkness.
• Moss grows everywhere- nature encroaching and taking over.
• Broken shards of glass speak of neglect, sadness and melancholy.

 

The feeling I got was very strong- it’s a lonely unloved place. Lost in its own world. The tiles the fittings and some of the glass windows were all still there. It has an ‘aborted’ feel. Its development was stunted. But I have to admit that there are strong atmospherics here.  There’s a presence of something.

4) The Island of Bali 

The hotel has sculpture that reminds us it is relatively modern -to be so haunted. The culture of Bali is full of demons and spirits all incorporated into one whole rounded view of life and the hotel fits right in to that picture.  There are some truly sacred sites here in Bali, like the cliff temple at Uluwatu, and they are supercharged with ancient geomagnetic vibes.

There is an ancient stone in Sanur. It is venerated as the most ancient human-made artefact in Bali – The Belanjong Pillar. This mysterious stone, discovered in 1932, has Nagari script used for Balinese and Sanskrit, and is wrapped in a coloured cloth often used as protection from marauding spirits.

No one is exactly sure how old this stone is – around 1,200 years at least – or what its purpose was, other than an assertion of power and authority.

The rest of Bali has an abundance of striking temples like Tanah Lot, which are venerated for good reason, poised on a dramatic sea rock.

Yet because Bali is on a volcano the entire area is charged with volcanic energy generally. It’s igneous rock with very fertile soil. And the phenomenal waterfalls flow from an underground primary water source seemingly without end.

When it comes to earth energy lines in Bali – it strikes a chord. All the rock temples and water source temples are connected to Besakih, the mother temple on Mount Agung, that forms a solid grid that spreads beyond to other islands and even as far as Angkor Wot in Cambodia.

This makes Bali a centre for healing,

It is a focal point for energy vortexes where the presence of unseen forces is felt in daily life.

You cannot escape the fact that the island houses these volcanoes. The big three are  venerated as sacred and Mount Agung is used as the main geolocational orientation system. From one temple the three peaks can be seen standing in a row like at Giza, and Agung, the tallest, is really shaped like a monumental pyramid. There’s no mistaking its power.

One ancient god of the volcano is called Batara da Tonta worshipped in the ancient village of Trunyan  on Lake Batur. In Trunyan people are not cremated but wrapped in a shroud and placed under a giant banyan tree to decompose. Their practises are older than those of the Majahaput dynasty.

5) The Backstory: Tommy Suharto

But there’s also a backstory to the hotel that helps explain its mystique

It involves Hutomo known as ‘Tommy’ Suharto, the son of the Indonesian President Suharto. This hotel was said to have Tommy’s investment money all over it.  He stood to gain or lose by the success of this project.

Suharto junior still is a pretty powerful and wily character. He loves money, girls and Lambourghinis. He is not afraid of the Indonesian judiciary; and, it is claimed, he ordered the murder of the judge who put him and his best golfing pal, Bob Hasan, in jail. This all adds to the legend of why the energy at the hotel is so thwarted.

On July 26^th 2001 that same judge Mr Syafiuddin Kartasasmita, who had turned down an 18 Billion Rupiah bribe, was gunned down on the streets of Jakarta.

Fingers pointed to Tommy who had gotten out of prison and was on the run. A year later he was convicted again of owning the guns that killed the judge and sentenced to 15 years. He was playing badminton in prison when the verdict was announced.

Everything stalled on the Bedugul project. People who had been ruined by Suharto vocally cursed this hotel. Construction workers were said to have died here. So, the place was almost finished but is now only a lure for what is called ‘ghost tourism.’

6) The Astrology of the Main Players

It is worth a quick Iook to the astrological charts of the characters involved and each moment -to search for further clues. These are usually configurations in the  charts where aspect patterns emerge. It is like seeing beyond the surface into the forensics which uses a symbolic language- and even if that seems technical, the emergent potentials can still be clear – it is like hacking into the universe’s hidden messages to understand each Kairos moment.

Tommy Suharto was born 15^th July 1962, a Cancer. He has Saturn opposite the North Node. He has Mars square Venus/Pluto opposite Jupiter all in mutable signs, which can be turbulent, and difficult to contain. Cancer is highly emotional but also cardinal so they don’t mess around when they are on a vendetta.

The hotel never had an opening date, but let’s assume that the month that the hotel stalled in its tracks was roughly around the time of Suharto’s conviction – so in September of 2000. That was soon after a partial eclipse in Leo on July 31^st – the last in a series of five in that sign.  Leo is the zodiac sign of the country of Indonesia.

The chart of the day Judge Kartasasmita was killed, July 26^th 2001, has strong indicators something could happen – potentially not inevitably- Mars was conjunct Pluto and Chiron all in Sagittarius- and all on the judge’s natal Sun. This configuration sits opposite Saturn in Gemini which refers to short journeys – He was gunned down while driving his car: Mars is the gun, Pluto the death, and Chiron the wounding. The transiting Sun in early Leo was also on the judge’s natal Pluto and Chiron.

It might have been better if he had stayed at home that day.

The judge was himself a Sagittarius sun sign, born in 1940, which often symbolises the figure of a judge.  If you put the two charts of the judge and Tommy Suharto together you see the judge’s Mars right on Tommy’s Neptune- bound to cut through the corruption but that was fatal for him. As above- so below.

Suharto seemed determined to prove his point. There is even a link to Suharto and the bombings that took place in downtown Kuta at Paddy’s Bar in 2002 as Tommy owned shares in an explosive company. The majority killed were Australian. They rebuilt the bar nearby and called it Paddy’s Reloaded.

 

7) The Shadows on the Walls

In the darker rooms we thought we saw things. There were strange shadows on the wall. (Shadow photos) What were they? Well, some were created naturally and some created by using flash bulbs. . Strange how photos can distort what is or is not there.

And one photo in particular seems to have the shape of a ghostly figure- captured by the flash.   that’s me and my shadow standing in the doorway

But I still look to other photos where shapes look like entities on the walls. And if you brought a psychic here- they would know.

Walking around this deserted palace, I am reminded of a very creepy story by Paul Bowles called ‘The Circular Valley’ (1950) about a genius loci what’s called the Atlajala. This is a a hungry ghost – a discarnate being of a specific location.

Many people feel watched at certain locations. It could be this spirit that feeds off human emotions. It is quite impersonal, utterly detached, and not always intending any harm, yet it craves the sensations that humans feel as they feed off  human consciousness. It can take over the mind and unhinge the emotions.

There are also what are called ‘Nagas.’ These creatures are represented in sculpture as serpents holding up the gateways of temples. The Nagas embody the hidden elemental forces of any location. They are serpent-spirit devas,  that live in the netherworld. It is wise not to ignore them especially at the meeting of two rivers where water flow turns into a confluent vortex. Some demand their sacrifices and the local Balinese would certainly make offerings to appeal to and ensure good treatment by the Nagas.

8) Wabi Sabi: the Beauty of Decay

Trees and shrubs have grown around the edifice- and there is a dramatic  staircase that when you descend just leads into a thicket into an overgrowth of plants, so it has a fairytale-ish atmosphere like the briar rose.

There’s a sense of decay here.

The Japanese have a notion called Wabi Sabi – the elusive beauty of imperfection –  an appreciation of the broken, in which decaying, mouldy, broken and  flawed items can be deemed just as beautiful because they incorporate that natural entropy and disintegration. The beauty is enhanced by the decay and rot and any flaws that need repair. This is a Romantic notion, but it has a lot of appeal – and that really suits the Bedugul hotel.

9) How Haunted is the Haunted Hotel

As to whether this hotel is genuinely haunted by people who actually died here, is still open to question. It certainly feels like they might still be here walking the empty rooms.

I don’t want to say definitively and there are no named ghosts wandering about, or any clearly documented sightings of anyone. It would need more investigation with better recording equipment to find out.

However, in Bali, according to tradition, a spirit only finally comes to rest once it is properly cremated and many bodies are buried temporarily until the family can afford the proper cremation ceremony. So, there could indeed be souls in limbo, and they do occasionally dig up graves to retrieve the bones to burn.

Most likely, the building itself- its extraordinary location- its creepiness- its energy- is this ghostly spirit I think, all the hungrier for the few humans who visit.

This spirit is there in the walls.

Sensitives can feel that presence, as I did, while others might just shrug it off and say ‘nah, there’s nothing here.’  Some have even said it is scary but that the monkey forest in Ubud with its giant size waringari trees and creepers is scarier still.

Upon leaving, I said to the guard “Thank you for letting us in, but  you need to pray a lot.’”

“Oh I do,” he said, “everyday” and he pointed to the folded palm leaf offerings at the doorway with the incense burning.

But am sure he does not rest easily there at night. Perhaps he hears a few strange noises? For a portal is a portal no matter what. It can house elemental spirits, and liminal  and ‘shadow’ people.

“And who were those other people I saw going in?”

He looked puzzled and said ‘Those are Guests’

And only later did I think perhaps it was lost in translation and that he meant ‘visitors’.

‘as there are no guests at that hotel and never have been.’